Some people hear an improvement with the polarity adjusted, some people don’t. There is no right or wrong. It is your subjective preference.

From AMR's experience, this feature is enjoyed more in the North American market compared to Europe or the rest of the world.

How this benefits the listener

From recording to recording, try the polarity switch.

If you hear a difference, wonderful. The polarity switch means greater enjoyment to you.

If you cannot hear a difference, don’t worry, you are not in the minority, leave the polarity switch to its default “+”, non-inventing position.

At iFi, we let the listener dial-in the last few percent. So go ahead, flick that button and see if it is your cup of tea. We hope you like it.

It is nice to see the inclusion of the absolute polarity switch - although only trough digital input. One has to take care of the appropriate absolute polarity for the analog input at the analog source.

I wanted to participate during the design phase - but as always, one is stuck with the current standards regarding connector(s). We are basically stuck with RCA (which is horrible) and TRS (even more horrible). I do absolute phase reversal entirely mechanically, at the very end - at the headphone connector. It of course requires 4 contacts and no common ground - rulling out the TRS. XLRs or mini XLRs ( or at the very least TRRSs ) could be used - but as it requires surgery on connector end of practically all headphones in existance that conform to TRS, and requires much more space to accomodate TWO 4-contact headphone connectors ( wired in parallel, but one reversed in polarity ) in order to be able to change the polarity as required. After seeing the general outlay/size of the micro, I decided to postpone that post.

4. The iTUBE gets hot - almost too hot to touch in summer. The battery would not like it and nor would any attached player or phone.

That makes sense for the micro idsd (was planning on using it as a desk top solution so forget it's suppose to be portable too), but what about the mini idsd? Maybe i should elaborate on my question does the dsd1793 need the tube in the ic stage or will there be sonic improvements if the tube is in the preamp or amp?